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4 December 2017

India - 5000 Years of Science

“India has a long and dynamic
tradition of scientific thinking and technological innovation.” – A tradition
that stretches back 5000 years, in fact, from today’s scientific space
exploration missions to Mars to the first known use of the numeral zero. Illuminating India: 5000 Years of Science and Innovation, at the Science Museum in London (until 31 March 2018, free
entrance), is an ambitious little exhibition which neatly distils a flavour of
the great breadth and depth of an amazing human story. Divided into three
themed sections: observation, calculation, and innovation, it takes us from the
early city-building civilisation of the Indus Valley (c.3300-1300 BC), through
the classical and medieval eras (c.1500 BC-c.1500 AD), the Mughal (1526-1857)
and British (1757-1947) Empires, to the modern day Republic of India. Showing
how over millennia the cultures and peoples of the Indian subcontinent have
traded goods and knowledge – commodities, artworks, technology, ideas – with
other civilisations, the ripples of which have spread across the globe and
continue to reverberate today. In many ways, India has always been at the very
forefront of science.

The roots of Indian cosmology begin
in its many religious traditions, as symbolised by the ‘earth witness’ pose of
the Buddha statue at the start of the exhibition. Modern science is so often
divorced from its origins in people’s minds these days that it is interesting
to see here the linking of modern science to systems of knowledge which were
first developed in the traditions of folk culture as they became embodied and
codified in religious and philosophical thinking. Restoring this link is
probably no bad thing and is perhaps something which should be given far
greater prominence and focus, particularly given the remarkable resurgence of
creationist thinking and ‘flat-earthers’ in only the last few years.

19th century photographs of solar flares and sunspots on the surface of the Sun

To my mind
the early modern “Age of Enlightenment” in the 18th century as a pivotal
period of transition in the West, along with the richly deep traditions of
cosmology underpinning scientific concepts first found in the East, are more
than simply bridges from the eminent thinkers of the past to those of the
present – they are a means towards a more holistic understanding of our
worldview and more importantly the continuity of the enquiring mind which is
endemic to all cultures. That drive to understand the world around us, from
microcosm to macrocosm, is something shared by all peoples. Examining and
thinking about the environment in which we live (indeed with which we are
interdependent, despite the exponential impact which we are currently effecting
upon it), and contemplating the vast wonders of the wider universe itself in
all its enormity and our infinitesimally small existence within it, is the common
thread running through all human cultures across time.

Jambūdvīpa,
or ‘Jain Map of the World’, c.1817

Two very different but not
dissimilar maps at the start of this exhibition put me in mind of two books
which I bought while I was in Delhi last year: A History of Science in World Cultures: Voices of Knowledge by
Scott L. Montgomery and Alok Kumar (Routledge, 2016), and Cosmology to Cartography: A Cultural Journey of Indian Mapsby Dr
Vivek Nanda and Dr Alexander Johnson (National Museum, 2015). The first of the two maps, the ‘Jambūdvīpa’,
or ‘Jain Map of the World’ (c.1817), which shows the Jain concept of the
universe – with the notional continent of Jambūdvīpa at its centre – but which
also explains how to calculate vast numbers, including different types of
infinity, is neatly contrasted by the ‘Index Chart to the Great Trigonometrical
Survey of India’ (1860) on the opposite wall. The GTS chart illustrates the
prodigious efforts of British colonial officials to physically survey the
subcontinent. Each triangle on the chart represents the sum of hundreds of
distance and angle measurements made using heavy theodolites, cumbersome 100-feet
measuring chains, and compensation bars – like those displayed alongside –
which produced a map that at the time was unrivalled in both scale and
accuracy.

Having read Matthew Edney’s
excellent Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843 (University of
Chicago Press, 1997) I was particularly interested to see these items, as well
as the colonial-era botanical sketches made by unnamed Indian artists for
Nathaniel Wallich (a Danish surgeon and botanist employed by the British East
India Company) shown nearby, which are contrasted nicely by similar Mughal-era
artworks commissioned by the Emperor Janhangir (1569-1627).

Linking these artistic
as well as scientific exhibits is a fascinating machine – an oscillating plate
phytograph (early 1900s). Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937), often referred to
as the father of modern science in India, was fascinated by how plants respond
to stimuli. He developed this machine in order to measure the influence of
light, temperature and gravity on plant growth, thereby inventing a device
which, through enhanced magnification, speeded up the time it usually took to
conduct such studies. Arguably it’s only by marrying these supposedly opposites
– of art and ideas, faith and facts – that we can properly comprehend the
natural evolution of our current understanding of a scientific cosmology as it
was first seeded and how it has since grown in the collective human mind.

Nathaniel Wallich's botanical wattercolours, early 1800s

Oscillating plate
phytograph, early 1900s

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858-1937)

Painting of a Himalayan goat, 1807 & Painting of Akbar crossing the Ganges by elephant, c.1586-1589

As a centrpiece to the
exhibition, there is an example of the cleanest and most pristine auto-rickshaw,
or tuk-tuk, which you are ever likely
to see! – But this iconic mode of transportation (both amusing and scary by
equal measures to outsiders visiting India) makes a serious point about the
practical applications of science and engineering to the day-to-day lives of
ordinary Indians. India has always been a site of technological innovation – as
is illustrated by a fascinating set of objects and images relating to the Tata
steelworks.

Advanced metalworking has always been a key industry in India, exported
to other countries long before the developments of mechanised mass-production
in the colonial and modern eras. From the ‘lost wax’ technique used to cast
bronze statues of religious deities to the advanced chemistry which refined
India’s steelworks, producing personal arms and armour to tanks, battleships,
and steam engines, such innovations in engineering have helped to advance
globalisation in the modern era through industrialisation.

Photograph of steelworkers in Jamshedpur by Sunil Janah, 1940s-1950s - opened in 1907 Jamshedpur was the first modern steelworks to open in India

The railways – one of the
characteristic modes of transportation for which India is best known – were key
to developing networks of trade, communication, and control; regulating the
routines of life and work for millions of Indians from the 19th into
the 21st centuries. But these prodigious, practical applications of
science to the everyday first originated in the innovations of the theoretical.
To return to the Jain Jambūdvīpa map of the world, we see it juxtaposed again by
perhaps the most remarkable pairing of theoretical works of pure mathematics –
the ancient Bakhshali manuscript (c. 300-800), found in 1881, which contains
the earliest example of the use of the numeral and the concept of zero, sits
alongside the modern handwritten calculations of Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920),
and a handwritten letter from Satyendra Nath Bose sent to Albert Einstein in
1924. The digital revolution – based on a system of zeros and ones – has
facilitated the development of computer technologies which have enabled India
to advance and perfect its remarkable space exploration programme, reaching
Mars on its first attempt – amazingly the only country in the world (so far) to
do so.

The Bakhshali manuscript, c. 300-800

Selected papers from Ramanujan's work, 1914-1920

A second exhibition, Illuminating India: Photography 1857-2017, very
ably charts the history of photography in India from the so-called Mutiny or
Uprising of 1857, which resulted in the full colonisation of the subcontinent
by the British, to the seventieth anniversary of India’s independence this year
(visitors are not allowed to take photos in this exhibition, but you can click here to view
a wide selection of the images on display). Here again the exhibition is grouped into
three themes: performance and power, art and independence, and, modern and
contemporary. The first two sections contain a wealth of historical treasures
which I found truly fascinating – there are almost too many images presented
here, such that I could very easily have spent several hours taking it all in
had I had more time. The first section neatly contrasts the power of
photography in terms of commemoration and demonstration through colonial
propaganda images (from souvenir postcards to the early photojournalism of
Felice Beato), and the contrived courtly projections of princely power by
Indian royal families who embraced this new medium to show themselves off in
all their regal finery.

There are some remarkable examples
of the pseudo-scientific anthropological studies of colonial photographers,
such as Maurice Vidal Portman (1860-1935) who made a set of images of
ethnographic “types” for the British Museum in 1890 of Andaman Islanders,
expressly documenting the disappearing “primitive cultures” of such “noble
savages,” noting their supposedly significant anthropometric distinctions. Another
example is William Johnson, who set up a photographic studio in Mumbai around
1852, and later, working between 1868-1875, he compiled and published an
ethnographic study entitled, The Oriental
Races and Tribes and the People of India. A neat juxtaposition to these
images are those of the Indian photographer, the Maharaja Sawai Rum II
(1834-1880), who made a number of self-portraits of himself dressed up in the
different garbs of various Indian castes and classes. It is interesting to
contrast these indigenous “types” with those presented in the images of James
Waterhouse (1842-1922), which were published in his study, The People of India, in which it seems clearly apparent that one of
his subjects, the Begum of Bhopal, was directing the proceedings – ensuring she
was photographed in a number of guises which variously showed her as a royal
personage, a stateswoman, as well as a proud mother and grandmother. These sets
of images thereby invite us to rethink the agency at work behind such
photographic forms of representation and classification as commonly practiced
during this particular period of time.

Miniature charkha, or spinning wheel, 2017

There are also equally
fascinating and arguably more moving and emotive images from the end of the
colonial era on display in the second section of the exhibition – particularly
those of Margaret Bourke-White and Henri Cartier-Bresson – which document the
last days in the life of Mahatma Gandhi, his funeral and the immediate
aftermath of his assassination in January 1948. These images made me think back
to a small charkha, a hand-operated spinning
wheel, representing the kind of technology of personal empowerment and of resistance
through national self-sufficiency, the use of which Gandhi promoted in the
cause for Indian independence, which is included in the 5000 Years of Science and Innovation exhibition next door. This was
also a nice parallel for me, linking these two exhibitions to the India and the World: A History in Nine Storiesexhibition which I worked on last month at the CSMVS in Mumbai –
which also includes a much larger charkha, one which Gandhi himself may even
have used.

Six Defining Moments from India and Photography

The charkha spinning wheel which was key to Gandhi’s anti-colonial struggle
is more than simply a piece of technology to be utilised; its functionality has
a deeper conceptualisation if we think of it as a physical representation of
the Ashoka chakra, the ‘eternal wheel of the law.’ That conceptual link and the
continuity of such systems of thought and knowledge, of knowledge and power, of
self-determination and justice, of balance and harmony, lives on in perpetuity
– symbolised by the wheel at the centre of the national flag of India. Like the
cosmological wheel at the heart of the Indian religious world view, the Ashoka
chakra, the infinite mandala, or the wheel of the dharma, sacred to Jains,
Buddhists and Hindus alike, is perhaps also a representation of the scientific
soul of India and all its peoples.

National flag of the Republic of India, with the Ashoka chakra at its centre, 2017

If, like me, you
are interested in the history of science, colonialism, and photography, then
these are certainly two very excellent exhibitions not to be missed.